New Year's - China style

Happy New Year! Year of the snake that is...Our new year comes a few weeks after everybody else's so we have lots of time to realistically adjust our expectations for the coming year. Instead of one day of celebration, it's 30 days of festivities which start in a wave of excitement but end in sleepless nights of noisy fireworks at all hours, irritation because everything is closed and a bad case of the "Shanghai cough" thanks to the smoke pollution added to our already clogged atmosphere from all the burning and lighting of fire works. Shanghai shuts down, the streets empty and everyone goes "home" to be with their families. Even the homeless go home leaving me all to myself with my beloved streets of Shanghai. As if preparing for an impending natural disaster stores, kiosks, banks, offices, restaurants and public buildings are all boarded up and padlocked and waves of people swarm to the train stations, bus stations and airports to take part in the world's greatest human migration, but unlike the dwindling annual wildebeest migration Of East Africa; this one gets bigger every year. An estimated 3 billion trips are expected to occur between now and the end of February on the mainland alone. That's nearly twice the population!

I will not be one of the 3 billion, am staying put this year. On February 10, I will walk to my friend's house at 4pm ( while I still can navigate through the haze and traffic) and just before it becomes too dangerous to be out ( you cannot undo the damage of a firecracker hitting your eyeball.). Around this time my grocery store aisles will have been emptied out of all the liquor, fruit and candy - last minute purchases for local Shanghainese. We will eat snacks having exhausted all our culinary enthusiasm and efforts during Thanksgiving/ Canadian Thanksgiving/ Eid and Christmas stuffing turkeys and glazing ham, mashing hummus and seasoning gravlax ( you have to appease everyone's nostalgia and Christmas always ends becoming christmakwanzaka ensuring everyone gets a sliver of family tradition factored in). Chinese New Year is more chill thank goodness. We will drink wine, listening to music while waiting for the firecrackers to subside, along the flying debris and clouds of grey smoke. Once it gets dark the fun really starts the sky lights up in rainbow colors to the sound of a thousand shotguns and its brilliant and captivating and loud and erratic - like synchronised chaos. For a couple of hours it's fun and entertaining, until you realise it's not subsiding but getting worse, every household has their own of box of boomworks. This is when the drinking becomes a tonic to deal with the noise and the

For my Chinese friends however the fun is just starting, lazy susans are stacked with dozens of dishes acting as all kinds of good luck charms for what's to come when the clock strikes 12 and the new year begins. There is the requisite fish for "prosperity and togethernes", dumplings ( jiaozi), Kumquat fruit, mandarins for abundance of wealth especially gold, maize (corn) for growth and abundance, lychees for close family ties, meatballs for family reunion, noodles for longevity, peaches for immortality, peanuts and pomegranates for multiple offspring. My personal favourites are rice for fertility and luck, rose apples for "calmness" or as I prefer to see it for keeping one's shit together mentally, seaweeds for "good hair" and exceeding wealth, pineapples for luck of the gamblers, onions are for cleverness, lettuce for guaranteeing a pregnancy and watermelon seeds for multitudes of offspring ( which is a bit counterproductive with our current one child policy.) You don't get fresh tofu because the white color signifies death but I think it's just because its disgusting and tasteless, hardly suitable for such a special occasion. And if you are going to have chicken, it better be presented as a whole; head, feet, torso and all for family unity.

Generations of families will gather in the evening around the tv to watch a large performance extravaganza filled with famous singers, comedians, dancers, poets you name its a 3 hour cirque du soleil comedic performance. The format is predictable and light hearted much like "dinner for one" except the production gets bigger and better every year as technology pushes the envelope further. Coffee tables will be piled with 8 different sweets and fruit for snacking and off course symbolism. There will be cups of steaming tea bai jiu flowing freely as well as a tray of expensive cigarettes. The fireworks and firecrackers are lit at intervals to ward off all kinds of demons and evil spirits that may try to mess with someone's good fortune in the coming new year. In villages and small towns, hundreds of villagers will come together to create and perform a lion or dragon dance for the occassion (this you just have to see for yourself, its pretty cool.) "Piles of "money" and incense are burned in crude piles on the streets to honor the dead and piss off foreign neighbours who can't stand the smell. It doesn't stop there, it's tradition to buy lucky under wear, protective gear against said demons and evil spirits. These are always red and are to be worn as often as possible throughout the year. The noise, the chaos, the excess of food, 40 proof alcohol ingestion and red bloomers I can never fully understand - but then again my friends find it difficult to wrap their minds around the Easter pageant of chocolate bunnies and hot cross buns, I have since given up trying to explain why it's justifiable and symbolic for an overweight white haired man dressed in red who sneaks into the house to eat cookies, drink milk and leave coals under my tree if I have been "naughty" while a red nosed reindeer prances outside waiting to whisk the old man off on his trip around the world in one magical and snowy night delivering gifts. Strange practices aside, the sentiment of New year is still the same, it's a time to party, spend time with family and a time for hopeful beginnings While all of you can only hope for a year of good health, an excess of wealth and good fortune, I have 8 pairs of red panties guaranteeing all 3!